The molecules of a nematic liquid crystal exposed to an isotropic surface adopt a mean tilt relative to the normal but have no in-plane alignment-that is, they are free to have any azimuthal orientation in the surface plane. Pursuing the theoretical suggestion by Meyer that, in spite of this azimuthal degeneracy, spatially inhomogeneous isotropic surfaces combine with liquid crystal elastic anisotropy to produce alignment, we show that a boundary line between two isotropic regions that differ in mean tilt does indeed align the liquid crystal. The boundaries on a patterned surface of distinct isotropic regions thus act as a system of lines that the molecular orientation locally follows. This enables the development of liquid crystal alignment surfaces based on printing or lithographic patterning.

A novel driving scheme based on simultaneous emission is reported for 2D/3D AMOLED TVs. The new method reduces leftright crosstalk without sacrificing luminance. The new scheme greatly simplifies the pixel circuit as the number of transistors for V th compensation is reduced from 6 to 3. The capacitive load of scan lines is reduced by 48%, enabling very high refresh rate (240 Hz). IntroductionStereopsis, the basic principle of producing depth perception with 2D displays, was discovered by Sir Charles Wheatstone [1] in 1838. In fact, the first "motion picture" was a series of stereoscopic images (1878) [2]. Since that time, various types of 3D displays have been invented. However, the overwhelming majority of today's displays are only 2D capable, despite the viewer's interest in 3D displays.Fatigue or dizziness from watching 3D displays may be the primary cause for slow adoption. Poorly authored 3D content is one factor that causes discomfort. Having to wear special glasses for one to two hours is another. The third factor is the discrepancy of the rendered images with the real solid object. Many 3D displays fail to reproduce the feeling of solidity of a 3D object because some of the information (image) intended for the left eye gets to the right eye and that for the right eye reaches the left eye. We call this undesirable effect left-right (L-R) crosstalk.Viewers do not like having to wear 3D glasses. Therefore, autostereoscopic displays would be preferred. However, auto-stereo displays developed thus far have a very limited viewing zone (angle and distance) and inevitably they show L-R crosstalk. Only stereoscopic displays that include passive/active glasses can be made L-R crosstalk-free regardless of the viewer's position and viewing angle.In order to send left and right images separately, stereoscopic displays use two methods: spatial division or temporal division. Spatial division requires 2x spatial resolution (2x FHD for FHD) and temporal division requires 2x temporal resolution (120 Hz for 60 Hz). In most cases, spatial division incurs higher cost (2x driver ICs and patterned polarizer) than temporal division and it is subject to penalties due to reduced aperture ratio (reduced life time for AMOLEDs and reduced brightness for LCDs). For these reasons, we believe that the temporal division should prevail in the near term, that is, before an auto-stereoscopic display that is completely free from restrictions on viewing zone is invented.In this report, we propose a new scheme for frame-by-frame driving of a 3D AMOLED display. It exploits the fast responding and self-emissive nature of AMOLEDs to produce bright and L-R crosstalk-free 3D. New Driving Scheme: Simultaneous EmissionFIGURE 1 shows conventional driving methods for AMOLEDs. There are basically four distinct functional steps: (1) reset, (2) V th storage, (3) data scan, and (4) emission. In the conventional method, all these steps progress line-by-line, including the emission step. We call this approach progressive emission (PE). A frame-by-frame impl...

We present a quantitative study of the simultaneous effects of surface topography and friction in atomic force microscopic imaging of octadecyltriethoxysilane-on-glass self-assembled monolayers, patterned by illumination with ultraviolet radiation through a mask. The ultraviolet light leaves a ∼1 nm deep topographic depression in the exposed areas, and produces larger surface-tip friction which can be the dominant contribution to the apparent topography.

A novel driving scheme, named Dynamic Capacitance Compensation (DCC), for active-matrix (AM) LCDs was developed. It takes the charge-&-hold nature of AM-LCDs into consideration to enhance the switching speed. By incorporating DCC and faster liquid crystal, a TFT-LCD whose response time was less than 10 ms for all gray levels with the on + off time of 8.4 ms was developed. DCC can be applied to any kind of LCD modes to reduce the gray response time to less than 1 frame.

Although LCDs are widely used in power‐consumption critical applications, they are not very energy‐efficient. The largest absorber of light is the color filter. We developed a TFT‐LCD with four‐color subpixels: red, green, blue and white. The addition of the white subpixel greatly enhanced the light efficiency: up by 50%. The RGB‐to‐RGBW mapping algorithm was designed so that the hue and saturation remains unchanged from the original color. The result is a very bright display with color characteristic almost identical to RGB LCDs.

Last year, we introduced a TFT‐LCD with RGBW color system. The primary advantage of the RGBW system is that its optical efficiency is at least 50% higher than the RGB system. However, it is not a simple task to incorporate the new color system into the existing infrastructure of the RGB system: the driving circuitry, fabrication of color filter, and color conversion. In this report, the practical hurdles are discussed and the solutions are presented.

The switching speed has become critical once again for LCDs to enter the TV market. In this report, three motion artifacts resulting from the slow response are identified: decrease of dynamic contrast ratio, stroboscopic motion, and blurred edge. It is shown that the first two artifacts disappear completely when the response time is less than 1 frame. However, moving edges cannot maintain the sharpness even if the switching speed is infinite, due to the nature of the hold-type displays. We show that when LCDs response within half a frame, the quality of moving images is almost as good as that of zero-response time LCDs. Employing response-overshoot can enhance the image quality even further.

RGBW AMOLED panel, compare to the RGB panel, has lower power consumption and current stress and as result — bigger life time. Using special algorithms and RGB subpixels (as additional white) permits to increase brightness of this panel up to 2 times. At the same time it's very important to keep panel current at permissible range. We propose an algorithm, what permits to increase brightness of the RGBW AMOLED panel and limit its summary current at the same time.